harara

harara means very hot in arabic.  good word to know as it was about 90-110 my whole time there.

shortly after writing the last update i took a walk around essouira where i met a man named najib who is a musician and purse store owner.  we started talking about his instruments and within about a half hour we headed to his place for a jam session with a bunch of the local talent.  while i held my own, i was by far the least talented amongst the crew.  these guys were amazing got into all sorts of old sudanese spiritual songs as well as arabic and berber traditional music.  one guy did a cover of neil young´s harvest perfectly although he barely spoke a lick of english. 

the next day i left really early for fez where i spent a couple days before taking the train back to casablanca to catch my flight to madrid.  the medina in fez was by far the coolest yet as it has some 7000 winding halls and alleways.  the leather tannery within the medina was also pretty amazing (and smelled very powerful).   they soak the goat and camel hides in these deep pits filled with a mixture of water, lemon, sulfuric acid, pigeon shit and cow manure.  this gets the wool off the hides.  there are also a number of dye pits with local dyes made from a variety of different plants and minerals.  they asked me if i wanted a mint sprig to help with the smell but i declined as i didn´t want to seem soft.  i was very close to vomiting.  a british woman that was there ran out and threw up in the alley.  gross, huh?

anyway, besides a weird run in with some dude on the train that showed up to my hotel to try and be my tour guide, fez was a great place to visit.  the last four days included two 14+ hour trips on planes trains and automobiles and i got what i think was my second case of food poisoning on the way out of town.  so, being in madrid now to rest is just what the doctor ordered.

oh yeah, met this japanese kid named taro on the train to the casablanca airport.  he was carrying the same martin backpacker guitar as me which neither of us had seen our whole time travelling.  upon further discussion we realized that we were the same age, had both worked in the technology world for years and are both likely heading to south america after this jaunt.  taro is a very cool and funny guy.  he sometimes pretends he doesnt speak english (even though his english is amazing) to get out of a pinch.  he spent 16 hrs in the madrid airport last night.  he worked at pizza hut making pizzas in london from 20 to 22 without speaking any english.  this is only because they wouldn´t hire him at mcdonalds.  he made friends with a frenchman who worked at mcdonalds and they lived together subsisiting on pizza hut and big macs for 2 years.  when he finally spoke enough english to complain that his work conditions were shit they promoted him to manager. 

ok, that´s it for now.  headed back to israel on wednesday.  will post a bunch of pics from morocco and a few more shots from spain in the next few days.

salam.

jabril